On This Day - 16th September
1387 King Henry V was born at Monmouth Castle. He went on to win the Battle of Agincourt against the French on St Crispin’s Day.
1400 Owain Glyndŵr, Welsh ruler and the last native Welshman to hold the title Prince of Wales, instigated the Welsh Revolt against the rule of Henry IV of England. This statue of Owain Glyndŵr (see 
picture) was unveiled in Corwen, the town where he was born, on 13th September 2007.
1485 Yeomen Warders, the bodyguard of the English Crown - popularly known as 'Beefeaters' - was established by King Henry VII. Yeoman Warders work full time at the Tower of London. They are retired from the Armed Forces, have at least 22 years of service and must also hold the Long Service and Good Conduct medal. Additional note from Dave Phillips - "Yeomen of the Guard work at St. James' Palace on a voluntary basis, around 10 days a year and are often incorrectly referred to as Beefeaters."
1701 James Francis Edward Stuart, sometimes called the 'Old Pretender', became the Jacobite claimant to the thrones of England and Scotland.
1785 Birth of Thomas Barnes, editor of The Times. Barnes took over the editorship in 1817 and did much to improve it. The newspaper was nicknamed ‘the Thunderer’ because of the forcefulness of its content.
1847 The United Shakespeare Company bought the house in which playwright William
Shakespeare was born at Stratford Upon Avon in Warwickshire for £3,000.
See 
picture. It became the first building in Britain to be officially preserved.
1859 British explorer Dr. David Livingstone discovered Lake Nyasa - now Lake
Malawi, in central Africa. He was from humble beginnings and was born in Blantyre, eight miles south east of Glasgow. His mother, father and four brothers and sisters lived in a single room in a tenement known as Shuttle Row (see 
picture), which they shared with 23 other families. Shuttle Row (see 
picture) is now part of the David Livingstone Centre.
1861 The Post Office Savings Banks opened in Britain.
1888 Walter Bentley, British car designer, was born.
1915 The opening of Britain’s first Women’s Institute, (regularly referred to as simply the WI) at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Anglesey, Wales. See 
picture of the Llanfair PG sign. Its two aims were to revitalise rural communities and to encourage women to become more involved in producing food during the First World War. It is now the largest women’s voluntary organisation in the UK.
1945 World War II: Japanese troops in Hong Kong surrendered. The surrender was accepted by Royal Navy Admiral Sir Cecil Harcourt.
1947 John Cobb set a world land speed record of 394.2mph.
1960 Donald Campbell destroyed Bluebird in a crash at 350mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats in north west Utah. He was only slightly hurt.
1968 Britain introduced a 'two tier' postal system - First and Second Class. Letters and parcels bearing the more expensive 1st class stamps would be given priority of delivery.
1977 The death of Marc Bolan (born Mark Feld). Bolan was an English guitarist, singer and songwriter and was a pioneer of the glam rock movement in the early 1970s with his band T. Rex. He died in a car crash in London, two weeks before his 30th birthday and was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland Ohio.
1981 Two British political parties - the SDP and the Liberals - voted for an alliance.
1992 Black Wednesday, when the GB Pound Sterling was forced out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism by currency speculators and was forced to devalue against the German mark.
2000 Cyclist Jason Queally claimed Britain's first medal of the Sydney Olympics.
2002 The world's first self cleaning glass was launched after being developed by scientists at the leading glass company of Pilkington's in St Helens.
2021 The death of Sir Clive Sinclair, aged 81. Sinclair was a man of vision and popularised the home computer, the pocket calculator and the Sinclair C5 "a small, one-person battery electric recumbent tricycle." In 1980 he launched the first affordable consumer computer, (the ZX80) at less than £100. At that time computers cost at least £700 (over £3,000 when adjusted for inflation). I still have two Sinclair ZX81 computers. They came with a mere 1KB of memory. Some of his products were sold in kit form. I built one of his kit calculators and an LED digital watch, known as the black watch.